I'm Kevin Given. I run Triangle Fencing Co. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I built Given Siding LLC from launch to $1M in trailing-12-month revenue within 15 months of operation. Between the two companies I deal with the everyday reality of running service businesses: quoting jobs, scheduling crews, chasing payments, managing leads, and trying to keep customers happy without working until midnight.

For years I've used ServiceMinder daily on the siding side. Before that I worked in sales at companies that ran on Salesforce. I've now reached the point with Triangle Fencing where the spreadsheets and group texts don't scale anymore — I need a proper field service platform, and I'm in the middle of figuring out which one.

ContractorTechReview is the result of that process. Rather than picking a tool quietly and moving on, I'm doing the homework in public.

What this site is

Every page on this site is built around one question: if you ran a contracting business, would you actually pick this software?

That's a different question than "what does the vendor's marketing page say?" or "what features does this platform have?" — and it's the question I find the existing review sites mostly avoid.

You'll find three kinds of content here:

  • Individual software reviews — deep dives on Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldPulse, ServiceMinder, ServiceTitan, and others.
  • Head-to-head comparisons — when you're down to two finalists and you need a real breakdown.
  • Best-of by trade — fencing contractors, siding contractors, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. Different trades need different things.

How I evaluate software

The full methodology is on the How we review page, but the short version is this:

I'm looking at the platforms the same way I'd look at them if I were spending my own money — because eventually I will be. That means I care about pricing transparency, day-to-day usability, the parts of the workflow that break for trades with longer sales cycles (fencing, siding), and whether the company seems likely to still be around in five years.

I don't take vendor sponsorships. Some links on the site are affiliate links — if you click through and sign up, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That's covered in detail on the disclosure page, and the short version is: affiliate commissions don't change which software ranks where. The ranking reflects which platform I'd actually pick.

About my background

I'm a contractor and operator, not an HVAC tech or a plumber. I won't pretend to know things I don't. When I write about software for a trade I haven't worked in directly — HVAC, electrical, pest control — I rely on aggregated user feedback, public reviews from G2, Capterra, and Reddit, vendor documentation, and conversations with contractors I know who do work in those fields. I try to flag clearly where I'm speaking from direct experience and where I'm not.

Get in touch

If you run a contracting business and have thoughts on a platform you've used, or if you're a vendor and you'd like to flag something incorrect, the best way to reach me is through Triangle Fencing's contact form.

Thanks for reading.

— Kevin